4/2/24 - Happy Anniversary to US; NNM photo contest winners; Spotlight: Critikid; Food Rating Apps: Helpful or Harmful (Part 2)

Portions of Tuesday newsletter are FREE!

🎉🍾Happy 10th Anniversary to BUILD UP DIETITIANS!

Build UP Dietitians started in April 2014 as just a simple Facebook page created by Leah McGrath, RD, LDN in order to have a community for dietitians, RD2B, & nutrition students. The goal was to create a safe space to communicate and share information, to #stand4science and promote the work of dietitians.

Now, ten years later, Build Up Dietitians is considered a global social media platform with dietitian followers all over the world. Our presence includes Facebook, 16 closed/private Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Threads, Twitter, Instagram and a newsletter that’s published 2x/week! A conservative estimate of our reach is over 100K!

Stay tuned for special announcements throughout the month of Aprils as we celebrate…

📢Here’s the first anniversary announcement:

Dietitian Tara Laguerta created this fun coloring and activity book for us. For each one sold during April, we’ll donate $1 to World Central Kitchen! Go HERE to order.

💡Spotlight: Stephanie Simoes and Critikid

Meet Stephanie Simoes, the creator of Critikid. Stephanie is an online science teacher and educational video creator.

Website: Critikid - Critical Thinking for Kids Facebook: Critikid

Q1: What's the goal of Critikid?

”Critikid's goal is to help kids build their critical thinking skills through a science-fiction adventure. My website has courses on logical fallacies and formal logic so far, and it will cover more topics like cognitive biases and science literacy in the future.”

Q2: For parents reading this, why is teaching kids to be critical thinkers important? 

“Critical thinking is children's armor in the fallacy-filled online world. Understanding logical fallacies helps children to be better communicators, which will help them to engage more rationally and clearly in comment sections. Having basic science literacy and logic skills can help kids to sift through the enormous amount of information and misinformation they will encounter online.”

📱(Part 2) Food Rating Apps: Helpful or Harmful?

The two food rating apps that seem to be getting the most mention are “Bobby Approved/Flav City” and “Yuka”.

Why should you be familiar with them and what’s our concern? These are more than single ingredient filters (e.g. Kosher, low sodium, gluten) to help consumers find products. These go much beyond that with often seemingly arbitrary, capricious, and even puzzling assessments and ratings.

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